The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot

My complete 24-page comic-book adaptation of the poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot (Click on images to enlarge).

***A printed version of this comic is now available for purchase. The cost is $15 (Canadian dollars) + $5 shipping within Canada/ $8 to US/ $14 international shipping. To place an order, contact info@jpeterscomics.com.***

A printed version of this comic is in fact available for purchase. The cost is $15 (Canadian dollars) + $5 shipping within Canada/ $8 to US/ $12 international shipping. To place an order, contact info@jpeterscomics.com.

It’s an interesting point, and it’s true that in my drawing I have depicted the mermaids moving in the direction of the waves. So there’s a bit of an inconsistency there. But Eliot actually says ON the waves. I suppose this could still be said of the mermaids if they were moving in the opposite direction of the waves, towards the sea.

Can I ask you if I can put some of your Prufrock’s works in my tesina?
I will write that you did everything.
I think you made a great representation of the poemand so I thought about using some of your images in my tesina

Yess I ammm
Tesina is an oral exam when you finish high school in Italy.
Can I ask you why do you choose to create these comics using the love song of j. Alfred Prufrock and also where do you come from?It is all connected with my exam
Thank you so much in advance

Ah! In bocca al lupo, allora! I come from Montreal, Canada, and I spent a few years in Italy as a child and as a teenager -on Lago d’Orta, provincia di Novara. The reason I chose to adapt Prufrock into comics is because it’s probably my favourite poem, and because from my first encounter with it it had always evoked a lot of imagery in my head whenever I read it.

Hi Julian!! I’m Micaela, an Argentinian student. I’m studying to be an English teacher, near to get my degree.
I’m currently working on a final paper for a Literature subject. I’m doing research and analyzing your wonderful comic adaptation of Eliot’s poem.
I would like to know some things that I struggle to infer:
* Why did you translate the epigraph?
* Why do you segment the comics poem where you segment it?
* Were you inspired in Eliot and Viviane to illustrate this adaptation?

I would be amazed and glad if you answer me. It would also be of great help for me.
Thanks in advance.
Micaela

I found your website by chance and your work is awesome. This is one of my favourite poems and you gave it some life – thank you for doing it, and thank you for sharing.
I am an Italian literature teacher and I see that you have done some amazing work also on other poets, I may show them in class when we’ll study Ungaretti and Quasimodo 🙂

Let me say a huge thank you for this. I love the poem and this is so much better than the images I used to create in my mind before I read your superb version! The ending is pure genius as it is as surprising and open to interpretations as the poem. I can’t wait to teach Prufrock next year! And I think the Italian poems are amazing too.

I was glad to see your reply, and I hope you’ll apreciate my comment even if unfortunately I’m not a Professor (ah ah)… I’m an Italian high school teacher, that’s how we use the title over here! Thanks again for your work.

I remember reading this unfinished some time ago. I returned to it just to see whether it is finished, and I am planning to use this in my class! Hope my students will like it, and I will let it know how much!

I love it and am so impressed how well Eliot’s daringly foolish images, at times verging on goofy, work, when rendered graphic in this way. The voice, so beguiling and bracing, purrs and chimes and whispers and whines and sings through your images…

This is such a brilliant illustration! The graphic novel helps the poem come alive and assume a three dimensional quality. As a future English educator, I’m very excited to have access to this resource! I encourage you to keep producing illustrations for poetry; it’s something that seems very unavailable for many people unfortunately, but your rendition greatly aids in comprehension. I can’t express how much I enjoyed this. I never leave comments on anything, but I had to for this! Thank you so much….the world of British poetry is indebted to you! I would absolutely invest in your admirable talent if these were to be published!

Thank you so much, Sarah! Your comments are music to my ears. So many educators have written to me to tell me how useful they have found my comics as a teaching tool -hopefuly a publisher will also wake up to this potential one of these days!

Thank you Sid! I’m already quite busy with another graphic novel project, but have you thought of turning your Enrique Iglesias story into a comic yourself, using photographs? It could be something like those European “fotonovelas.”

This is very good! You know your Eliot! Now you should attempt illustrating “The Waste Land”! ☺ (And, from there, “The Hollow Men”, “The Four Quartets”, etc. I can already almost foresee you doing another good job with those, too.)

Thanks! I would definitely love to illustrate “The Hollow Men” and “The Wasteland” some day. It’s a pity “The Wasteland” is so long, as in some ways I think it’s even more suitable for comics adaptation than “Prufrock.” As For “The Four Quartets,” I’ve actually been illustrating some short extracts from each of them for “The Four Quarters,” an Indian online literary magazine. “East Coker” should be out any day now. And here’s the “Burnt Norton” comic: http://www.tfqm.org/Julian-Peters1.html

I wish you were able to illustrate every poem! It is such a great resource for teaching poetry especially as the amazing images give the poem a new dimension. You are truly gifted. Please keep drawing…

I’ve only recently used this in class to two groups of 12th graders.
It greatly added to their understanding, especially for the visual learners and weaker students.
I’m not sure I can agree with no visual reference to WWI (cf. “voices dying with a dying fall”) and some of the panels are perhaps a little too literal.
Well done sir on an excellent teaching aid – thank you.

I use Eliot often in my poems – the latest has ‘yellow fog’ and others too use eliot allusions. “Prufrock” is perhaps my favourite and this comic depiction is so good.
I have Robert Crumb’s “Book of Genesis” a similar endeavour and this matches that, Well done, Sir , a triumph.

Thank you Richard! “Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal,” as Eliot said. I haven’t read Crumb’s “Book of Genesis” yet, but his adaptations of some of Kafka’s short stories are some of the most successful transpositions of literature into comics I’ve ever seen.

I read this poem some 6 years ago, when I was falling in love with a girl and was standing outside her dorm room in college, not knowing how should I tell her that I loved her. A friend suggested this poem to me, then.

Seeing it in illustrations today reminded me of that time. And I think you aptly portrayed the J. Alfred Prufrock hidden inside all of us. I am just awestruck by the sheer brilliance of your work.

Heartiest congratulations and all the best. Hope this gets published soon for the world to see. Till then, I will be one of your proponents on the digital media.

Thanks so much Prateek! I hope the poem was helpful to you back then, but that you nonetheless decided go with a better pick-up line than “I have gone at dusk through narrow streets and watched the smoke that rises from the pipes of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows“ 🙂

This is AWESOME! I have been teaching this poem for 7 years or so now, and I really struggle. I’ve tried listening to Eliot read it, break it down section by section, discussion, and even have students illustrate sections of it, but this is perfection! May I use it in my classroom? Maybe your creative, appropriate, and right-on illustrations will be just what they need to “get it.” Thank you!

Thanks! It’s true that bringing back the crab could have been an interesting touch! but there might also have been the risk overcharging the images with too many elements, or of underlining something too insistently… I guess it’s always a bit of a balancing act.

This is honestly one of my favourite things ever. Prufrock is one of my all time favourite poems and you give it so much life. I especially love the little the little silent panels you have added in, they really capture the mood.

*standing ovation* What a lovely, nuanced interpretation that both honors the tradition and transforms Prufrock’s plight anew. I can’t wait to share it with my students. (Oh, how I would love to pair it with subtle sound effects of city streets, muted conversations in parlors, and ocean waves!) I love the paired door panels (you know you’re cheering him to disturb the universe!).

Even 20 minutes after reading it, I’m still turning over in my head the end “and we drown”. It was a long day at work so it took me longer than it should to figure out to tilt my head. By shifting perspective so that it looks like he is moving down, that made me think he was entering the underworld/hell and an echo to the character from Dante’s Inferno in the epigraph. Either I’m really tired and this is really obvious, or I’m really tired and I’m very much off the mark.

How did you come to the decision to shift that last frame so dramatically?

Thank you so much Larissa! A few people have been asking me about that last panel. I think it left some people a bit perplexed, but your interpretation is bang on! Not only did I want to suggest Prufrock’s feeling that he is falling or drowning into this soiree, the prospect of which has already caused him such anxiety, but I also wanted to subtly suggest a descent into a kind of personal Hell, and thus close the circle by reconnecting with the opening epigraph and “the abyss”. But I didn’t necessarily think people would read it that way on a conscious level, so I’m impressed you picked up on it.
As for how I decided to shift the final frame, I was playing around with different perspectives for the last panel that would suggest the townhouse entrance hall as a yawning pit, and nothing seemed satisfactory. Then it suddenly occurred to me at some point to try tilting a panel from one of the first pages, and add Prufrock’s leg sticking out like that of the drowning Icarus in Bruegel’s painting.

Prufrock is forever connected in my mind to that Buegel painting because the painting was on the cover of a literary anthology my Dad used to teach from. Prufrock was one of his favorite poems. Very strange to see them paired here again.

I don’t have a conscious memory of seeing that cover, but it’s possible. But the use of the Bruegel Icarus was in itself half-unconscious, it’s just one of those images of drowning that has always stuck in my mind and that I’m liable to refer back to. I wasn’t actually looking at the painting when I did the drawing, and in fact the legs in the two images aren’t at all at the same angle.

Julian, you are amazing and your work here is truly incredible. I so enjoyed re-reading the poem, so much more so within your artwork. You have captured the intent and majesty of Eliot’s superb poem and I think, when this is published in book form, open the poem to many more thousands of readers.
Thank you so much for the experience.
Linda

I have read “Prufrock” hundreds of times, taught it dozens of times, and almost thought that nothing could teach me more about the poem. But that is just what your series of drawings did–in addition to being a splendid work of art in its own right.

Julian, when I heard about this today, I was prejudicially against the idea of anyone illustrating one of my all-time favourite poems. But I came, I saw, and I am captivated. You have created a work of original art which adds greatly to the power of Eliot’s poem. Well done! I do hope you find a publisher to produce this beautiful work handsomely. Thank you for making it available here.

Given your preferences, you might like this translation of Baudelaire’s “The Pipe” from Fleurs du Mal:

An author’s favourite pipe am I,
My Kaffir woman’s countenance
Tells the beholder at a glance
My master smokes incessantly.
If he is mournful or in pain
I smoke as does the ploughman’s cot
When the good wife prepares the pot
Before her spouse comes home again.
I bind his soul and rock her well
In the blue twisting skein which slips
And rises from my fiery lips,
And weave a very potent spell
Which soothes his heart in its distress
And heals his spirit’s weariness.
— Jack Collings Squire, Poems and Baudelaire Flowers (London: The New Age Press, Ltd, 1909)

When one reads anything that is written, then the images that are inferred by the words appear in one’s mind’s eye. When someone attempts to create an actual image of the words, disappointment is mainly the case but here, one is not disappointed in the least.
Justice has been done to the imaginations of those words in bringing them into reality.

Very fine, Julian. I just shared it with the comics’ artists club (which sprang out of my 2009 Comics class) at Saginaw Valley State University. Of course, the geezer grumbled Back in the day college assigned us Eliot WITHOUT comics, snort, kaff kaff… 😉

Thank you, Mike. I have a self-serving theory that, given Eliot’s openness to integrating fragments of contemporary popular diction into his poetry, and his predilection for combining “high” and “low” cultural reference points, he would have been totally into poetry comics if he were alive today.

Congratulations for your great work! Generally speaking I am no fan of poetry or novels turn into comics, but I must admit that you did an excellent job, totally respecting T.S. Eliot’s poem! I particularly like Eliot and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, and your rendition into comics is really beautiful. Bravo!

This thrilled me beyond words, Julian. Having lived with this poem and images for so long, do you still love it, or are you tired of it? I hope you know that my eyes saw it for the first time and fell in love.

Thank you, Andria! Although I’m relieved to be done with illustrating it, I can happily report that I still love the poem as much as ever, even more than when I first embarked on this project, in fact. The beauty of Eliot’s words seems to be inexhaustible.

Being a lifelong fan of comics & poetry, I was intrigued at the mentioning of your work in Open Culture. I remember reading that title somewhere, & I’m familiar with his cats, but I didn’t know the poem, so I had Anthony Hopkins read it for me. The first thing that made an image in my head was the yellow smoke falling asleep around the house. Then I started reading your comic & the smoke was just as I had imagined it. I have now read it through a couple of times & it gets better every time. I understand the poem much better now. Thank you so much for this. Hope to see much more from your creative pen.

Thanks, that’s really nice to know! I also felt like I had a picture of those seagirls in my mind for ages, but when I got down to it it took me quite a while to figure out how to depict the mermaid simultaneously riding and combing the wave, and in a suitably graceful manner.

I’ve been involving myself with this poem for so long now that it’s hard to view it objectively, but instinctively I would say that I have to agree. I loved it from the moment I first encountered it, and my appreciation has only continued to grow ever since.

Now that you’ve brought this remarkable labour of love to its conclusion, the fruits of it are nothing short of masterful. The parts were great, but the sum of them is far greater. Hats off and jubilant applause, brother!

Bravo. This is really a wonderful response to the poem. I’m teaching Prufrock tonight and will share this with my students. I’ve been following its progress and was delighted to discover today that you have completed your work. There are a great many panels that I admire, but perhaps my favorite is the one accompanying “Do I dare disturb the universe?”, which you then return to on the very last page. This evening I will tell my students that if they can understand the paired “door knocker” panels on the final page, they will have a great start on understanding Eliot’s poem.

Thank you Rob! I had noticed that the original door knocker image was among the more popular online, which is partly why I decided to return to it in the end. Give the fans what they want, that’s my motto! I hope your students enjoy it.

The last panel is a stroke of genius. I had to stare at it for a few minutes and get a closer look to realize what you had done. It might be a visual gimmick but it does make you pause for a moment to appreciate the message of the poem.

This is really awesome! It’s my favourite poem and you painted it just the way i had it in mind too. I’m really looking forward to the next pages. You should have it printed somewhere as well, it’s a great piece of work and as you can see you have loads of fans already 🙂

Dear Julian,
I loved your comic adaptation of Eliot’s poem. It is absolutely brilliant. My favourite panel is the one which illustrates the line “Do I dare disturb the universe?”. I teach undergraduate students of literature at the University of Delhi, India. We are just starting Eliot. I will be using your illustrations in class.
As a professor of literature, a reader of Eliot and a fellow comics artist, I wanted to say thank you for taking on this project. Hope to see the remaining illustrations soon.

Thanks Payal! The last drawings are done; all that’s left for me to do is ink them. In fact the imagery from the “Do I dare disturb the universe” panel will reappear in this final section. I’d be curious to see your comics, particularly if they reflect your literary expertise.

Absolutely loved it. Congratulations for this stunning work. I’ll be delighted to buy a copy whenever you publish it. And if there’s no publisher, please do consider self publishing – for the sake of all of us readers.

I love your version of Prufrock. I’ve been sharing it with high school students for two years now, and I love the new panels! My favorite thing is how well you present the character of Prufrock. The combination of comedy and pathos in the pause before “I should have been a pair of ragged claws” is perfect, and shows a nuanced reading of the poem. Your illustrations really bring out the interplay of observing and being observed that are at the center of P’s paralysis. His sense of exclusion, his fear, his petty worries, all this is here. A tremendous piece of work.

Wow. Simply superb. I am looking forward to the passage about Hamlet “No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be.” Look forward to purchasing the completed work. Glad you chose this poem as your current piece. Indebted.

Thank you, Anonymous, your kind words are a big encouragement! I have been thinking about how to illustrate those last lines for ages now. I too look forward to the day when I pen the final panels, hopefully later this summer!

I’ve been tracking your Prufrock illustrations for a long time now. I hope you don’t mind, but I used a couple of your comics on post on my blog, with click-through links back to your blog of course. You can visit the post here: http://www.theperennialstudent.com/blog/2015/4/20/ts-eliot-comic-book-poetry, and if you’d like me to take it down, just let me know! Can’t wait till the full poem is published!

In the past I considered illustrating “Daddy” and “anyone lived in a pretty how town”. cummings would be an interesting challenge to illustrate because I feel the shapes of the figures should be a bit ambiguous, like they are in the process of transforming into something else. I think the paintings of Arshile Gorky, in which all the shapes look sort of like something identifiable, but not quite, could be a useful reference. And also Chagall’s kaleidoscopic yet airy compositions. One day, I hope!

This is wonderful! I know everyone else said this already, but I am an English teacher and I just have to say how great it is to have something like this to open my students’ eyes to the meaning of the poem. Please keep up the good work! I know that I and a million other English teachers out there will buy your work!

Thanks April! That’s really good to know. I hope to finish this adaptation in a few months, and then I will try to market it to publishers, at which time I will definitely emphasize the educational angle.

Hi Julian, I hope you won’t mind that I used a couple of your images on a video I made for a composition a friend of mine did over the poem by Elliot. Of course, I gave credit. I hope we’ll see the rest of the comic soon. If I can buy it from Spain, I’ll surely do. Cheers. Link for the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCFZngr4hc4

Julian, what about an Indiegogo or kickstarter campaign, donors get copies? Donors get pdf version, paper version, signed paper version for different commission levels etc… Don’t leave us etherized upon the table!

Thanks for the suggestions! I’m going to complete the rest of the comic this fall. If no publishing opportunities emerge by then, I will indeed presume to disturb the universe, and begin a crowdsourcing campaign.

I love the oyster shells as ashtrays. We forget just how tough times were for our ancestors. No going down to the $2 shop. Incidentally I think my love affair with Prufrock began with ” the yellow fog licked its tongue into the corner of the evening.” In London in 1946 as tiny girl I was standing with my Dad waiting to cross the street. It was December and we were on our way to visit my mother and new baby sister in hospital. I remember distinctly saying asking “Daddy where does the fog come from?” I don’t remember his answer, but when I first read the fog line I immediately conjured up my own image as if TSE had written it for me. Because of this I always assumed TSE was writing about London.

An evocative recollection! It could be London, where Eliot was living through much of the period in which “Prufrock” was written. Or it could be St. Louis, where Eliot grew up, and whose fog he himself recalled as the inspiration for that evoked in the poem. Boston, where Eliot was living when he began writing “Prufrock,” seemed like a good, “mid-Atlantic” compromise.

I love this so much! But one little thought: by “sawdust restaurants with oyster shells,” doesn’t Eliot mean the kind of restaurants that have sawdust on the floor and oyster-shell ashtrays *on the tables*?

I really like poetry and enjoy writing it from time to time, but I don’t usually read “old poetry” unless it’s assigned to me for homework and even then I find it hard to understand mostly because I don’t get into it. But I find what you’ve done with “The Love Song…” poem and the other ones you’ve done to be very refreshing and attention grabbing. Maybe it’s due to the fact that reading comics is awesome; but anyways your work is outstanding and I hope you finish this one soon.
P.s. I think poem comics will make younger generations enjoy poetry. Keep up the good work!

I may have read the Mad Magazine version a long time ago, I seem to have a very vague recollection of it. I certainly greatly enjoyed The Simpsons version! If you start following my blog you will receive updates on all publishing-related news.

Along those lines, Pablo Neruda’s “Nothing But Death” has wonderful imagery that lends itself to the comic form, to the point where the lines are almost art direction. The last line, for example: “and the beds go sailing toward a port / where death is waiting, dressed like an admiral.”

Since so many others are asking for their favourite poems to be illustrated by you, please may I put in a plea for ‘The Hollow Men’ (including the epigraphs)? It’s been my favourite for almost half a century and I love teaching and examining (on) it.

I have actually given a lot of thought to the possibility of adapting “The Hollow Men” (maybe paired with “Prufrock” in an Eliot comic book). I’ve no idea what it’s going on about half the time (your analysis would be welcome), but I find it incredibly haunting and beautiful, and full of the kind of strong imagery that works in comics form.

This has for years been one of my favorite poems to reread and to teach. I would have resisted a literal depiction, but then I saw yours and have savored every frame, every line, and every little irony or joke (the mantlepiece David, for instance). Thanks for sharing your skill and for reopening the work to me afresh.

extremely impressed with the artwork and happy to see a comic version of the prufrock poem! i am a comic book artist myself, as well as a former student of literature, so i find the work to be a big inspiration. regards, harsho

I am shocked that new readers are acting like your work is something like the second coming when Poetry Comics was created by Dave Morice in 1978 and he has 3 published books of them and is colaberating with people like Binaca Young and paul Tunis each doing the exact same thing with their various talents. Pufrock was the very first poem to be done in this art form in 1978 by Morice a student teacher to impress an Iowa Writers’ Workshop girlfriend. The difference? he did his over night, you are taking 3 years. In 3 years anyone could build Stonehenge! Also you have one dreary style, Morice in his published books showed a wide variety of styles to match the tone of different poems. His innovation has been a teaching aide in schools since 1980. How dare you pose as an innovator, instead of the slow imposter you actually are.

I think you will find I have more than one dreary style, as you might discover if you were to take the time to peruse my website. If you did so, you would find that I wrote a blog entry on Morice’s work about a year ago, one on which he commented, giving me his blessing. To which I wrote back, “It’s an honour to hear from you, Dave! Thanks for your kind words, and thank you for inventing poetry comics!”

The finest work (it dwarfs The Waste Land) by America and Britain’s finest poet, beautifully and imaginatively visually realized. Your drawings correspond very closely to how I imagined the poem ever since I first read it. I thank the Boston Globe for referring me to this site, and simply cannot wait to possess the book. This is a masterpiece which makes another masterpiece even greater.
-James F Jillett
Boston

dude..this is exacltly how poems should be taught…ppl will start lovin poetry once they see ur work..i’ve bookmarked ur page and am in a constant effort to make ur work recognized to everyone i can…ur awesome man,i mean that

P.S:i know ur busy completin other works but please consider doin “stopping by the woods on a snowy evening” and “rime of the ancient mariner”-i know u can pull it off man.congrats again and all the best for the amazin works yet to be publised by ur masterful mind.. 😉

Julian. Hey. I am a poet and English/Creative Writing teacher and teach “Prufrock” every year. This interpretation, via the comic, is brilliant and beautiful. I do hope you get this published. It’s an incredible teaching tool. It’s an incredible piece of art. Good luck finishing. When you do, I will have my school buy multiple copies.

Such a complete delight!!! It is gorgeous and well done in every way. Would love to contribute to Kickstarter, if you choose that route. I was going to suggest doing The Wasteland, but it’s hard to illustrate footnotes imaginatively, chuckle. Cheers!

Fascinating to see a visual rendition, especially in comic form, of a poem I have loved for years and had only imagined. And many of your drawings are oddly close to what I had imagined. Great job — eagerly awaiting the rest.

Prufrock may be my favorite poem, one that I subject my lit students to whenever possible. I’m very impressed with your illustrations so far, and I can’t wait to see this project in its finished form. Brilliant stuff.

outstanding, julian. you are an illustrator par excellance. really, quality quality stuff. I’m not familiar with t. s. elliot, but from what I got on a first reading, the pictures nail it. and I know how hard that is to do. you illustrate other people’s poetry with your pictures. I use other people’s pictures to illustrate my poetry. and I’m not having a lot of success getting what I want. I can only dream of results like yours. I didn’t dare look at annabel lee. it would have got to me worse than the wasp factory by iain banks. come in here, dear boy, have a cigar. you’re gonna go far, you’re gonna fly high, you’re never gonna die, you’re gonna make it if you try; they’re gonna love you.

One of the things I tell my students when we discuss graphic literature is that, many times, the lack of detail in the dialogue isn’t missing, it’s just gone visual. Dickens was a great one for describing everything down to the lint balls in a pocket, but for a graphic medium, we would just show a few lint balls in someones hand instead. The information is still there, just in another form.

Many people have asked the same question as above on “why do we need the pictures when we have the words.” Having taught ESL for years, as well as remedial reading, I can state that, as far as my observations and work has shown, the addition of the graphic material makes it easier for those who are language challenged to make those leaps in understanding the rest of us take for granted.

Fascinating. This is a compelling treatment of (one of) my favourite poem(s).
I haven’t read all the comments, so I may be repeating someone else… but two things occurred to me.
First, the bed in the “restless nights” panel should not be made up.
Second, the last fog panel should be completely blank. (That shouldn’t be too hard to draw!)
Please continue.

Art builds on art, so why not enhance the words with images? Some of the world’s finest poems are reactions to visual art. Why not go in the opposite direction and graphically react to words? “Why does it exist” is not neccessarily a reasonable response to art.

Yes, as in W. H. Auden’s “Musee des Beaux Arts,” one of my favorite poems — Auden’s speaker is at the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels, looking at Brueghel paintings, first “Massacre of the Innocents” and then “Icarus.”

The poem begins,

About suffering they were never wrong
The Old Masters.

Other art is a reasonable subject for art, IMO. So a graphic version of Eliot’s “Prufrock” is legit, as would be poems about paintings, etc.

You’ve brought T.S. Elliot’s wonderful poem to life exactly as I imagined it. I can’t wait for you to finish. The fog is delightful. I am savoring thoughts of the peach, and fearing (a little) the ragged claws. Bravo!

Do you take personal requests? 🙂
I’ve grown up loving this poem and your illustrations are EXACTLY how I imagined it in my head. Ever better, actually. I hope you get published soon! I can’t think of a better way to teach poetry to children and people who find poetry too abstract and inaccessible.

Please complete this poem, and then tackle “Ash Wednesday” by Eliot. Also, more Yeats. Your illustrations are perfect in matching the pictures in my mind when reading the poem. Especially love the “patient etherized on a table” and the furry fog.

Just read a glowing review of your work in our local paper (The Hindu dated 10 November ).Prufrock an all-time favorite of mine.Your work is extraordinary and captures the essence of the poem brilliantly.Looking forward to exploring your website at liesure.Hope to see your work in book form soon.

I was introduced to Eliot’s work while in high school, almost 40 years ago. I found that I had to memorize it in order to fully understand it (or to get what passes as understanding). I decided, at the time, to memorize the Complete Works of T.S. Eliot. I started with “The Hollow Men,” then “Prufrock,” and finally “Burnt Norton” before my brain got full. I can still recite them to this day.

The best thing that I can say about your illustrations is that they augment, and do not contradict, the images in my mind as I recite the poem. The are of the time, with exactly the proper styling, and I love that you have inserted Eliot as J. Alfred.

The second best thing I could say as that I know how hard this is, and how easy it would be for your illustrations to pale against the poetry. It does not. I had a music teacher who was attempting to convey to me how hard it is to mix two separate types of art – even words with music. “Did you notice,” he asked me, “that in the musical ‘Cats,’ that the song everyone hums as they leave the theater is the one song for which Eliot did not write the lyrics?”

This was, he explained, because it was so difficult for the composer to construct melodies brilliant enough to stand up to the lyrics. In “Cats,” the lyrics shine through, and the only brilliant melody is “Memories” which was not constrained by Eliot’s poetry.

This is why, for me, your illustrations are remarkable. They stand up to, alongside, and support his words. Kudos to you, sir.

I regret to admit that I have always felt a strong identification with J. Alfred Prufrock. Naturally, when I saw this link in my Facebook feed, I had to click on it. Amazing. Your artwork is amazing. I am floored. I look forward to further installments.

once… 1970’s… Washington Square Park… Poez…a menu with poems he could recite for a few dollars… I chose Proofrock…lost in the words while he spoke… THIS! brings back that moment and adds the pictures from your head to the ones in my head. Thank you.

1. I agree with the consensus here – this is brilliant.
2. I would be thrilled to give some support to a kickstarter project if you go that way.
3. One suggestion: Your image of evening spread out against the sky on page two just does not work for me. Placing that body in the foreground cuts it off from the sky which is where the text makes me want to see it and makes it look like somebody dropped a cadaver in the street and wandered off. I think it would work better if it was a background element – perhaps suggestive shapes made out of the dark tops of buildings in the distance…

Thanks! The patient is placed at the bottom of the page to ensure that it is the last element one sees, thus imitating the surprising twist at the end of Eliot’s opening lines. But when one look more closely, one sees that the entire street is also the body of the patient, who is lying “against the sky” in the sense of “facing up at the sky.”

Actually I think it is one of your stronger panels because it is less literal. (Is less literal more literary?) Your use of period detail really helps place the poem in context and explain many social aspects now gone by. But consider imagery that sometimes contrasts the text or even contradicts it. Seeing the poem after 35 years I realize now there’s almost a noir aspect, with this man out walking toward another doomed group date as the evening of his life is beginning to fall. It can be cinematic in the way it flashes ahead and back in time.

Outstanding. This is one of the major poems I use in my Intro to Lit courses. I’ve probably just missed the info but where is the full version available? I also teach a course on the Literature of the Graphic Word, and would like to be able to make this part of the readings for both classes.

That is a wonderful idea. I read this poem with my 11th grade English class. Not being a visual thinker, I often have to rather mechanically parse the lines of poetry. Once I was able to eventually ‘see’ the imagery, I felt it and loved this poem. This would be a really interesting class discussion to have students read the poem without the visuals, and then to see their reactions to the graphical version. Do the visual thinkers in the class react differently to poetry? Did they realize they were visually-oriented? Does the illustrated version help the verbal thinkers grasp it?

Yes, the illustration greatly helps. See my comments on my usage of graphic literature in ESL and remedial reading. I would love to have your input, and everyone else, if you use graphic literature. How do you use it, how do you explain it, what do you do for lesson plans and such. Perhaps one day we can do a group project and put out a pub through the Open Source protocols on the use of graphic literature.

Excellent! Now, if you are, really, accepting suggestions, then I’d love to see you animate G.M.Hopkins The Windhover and then Andrew Marvel’s Upon Appleton House! Thanks so much for this experience – a melding of my youth with my university years… fascinating.

So wonderful. You got the fog just right. This poem is very close to my heart. Your collaboration with it brought tears to my eyes. Please use Kickstarter to fund more. I will contribute. Also, may I email you about your ‘zines?

Exquisite work! I raced through those first nine pages and wanted to keep going. Got here via Open Culture and was a little skeptical before I started reading/viewing. But your method is so vivid and keenly literate (I love your rendition of “Streets that follow like a tedious argument/
Of insidious intent”) it was irresistible. Congratulations.

Wow … got to the end and wanted to keep going. A really magnificent visual interpretation. No idea what Eliot himself would have thought, but let’s assume silence means assent. I gather you need funding to complete the poem. Have you ever considered Kickstarter? Based on the comments here I can’t imagine you’d have trouble reaching your goal. Anyway, congratulations on your vivid, literate work.

Please do! I would definitely kick in a contribution to see this finished. And I have lots of friends who would, too. I’d love to see some of your other poem illustrations in long-format prints, too (which could easily be part of the Kickstarter as well–they’d make a great contributor gift.).

Very impressive … the tempo is just right, the synchronizing between verse & pictures is smooth, both optically and conceptually. Making readable comix verse is very difficult and you’ve done a great job. Looking forward to more projects from you.

This is incredible! It’s innovative and engaging and beautifully communicated. I enjoyed this very much. You’re a great illustrator. Definitely amazing work. I hope this leads to more graphic novels on poetry!

My niece sent me this and I was really taken aback. This is such a beautiful and revolutionary way to introduce poetry to another generation. Brilliant! If this ever goes to book form, you have my support 100%! Thank you for sharing this.

Jaw drop. You’ve captured each phrase with skill and insight. I feel like I stumbled upon a great and rare treasure. You’ve managed to actually enhance what was already a brilliant piece of work and take it to new heights. HBL (Granny Lala in Louisiana)

Just gorgeous. My favorite poem of all time, and lends itself perfectly to graphic novel form. What a beautiful project you have here. Congratulations, and thank you so much for this – this absolutely made my morning.

So cool, Julian. This is amazing and it inspires me to write good poetry. Wish this would happen with more and more poetry, helping it come alive for the story reader… You rock man, awesome work, keep going…

This is wonderful. A collection of poems illustrated like this would make a fantastic book for teaching literature to young people. I hope at some point you can secure funding to pursue these projects even further.

Also, though it is a selfish request from someone lacking French language skills, do consider illustrating additional English language poems for your blog.

Very well done! I hope it gets picked up by a publisher. Some of the suggestions for your next work are interesting and I like them. Let me offer one, much less literary but rife with graphic possibilities: one of Jim Morrison’s longer lyrics, such as “The Celebration of the Lizard” or “The Soft Parade.”

Thanks! The problem with or rock lyrics is that a) the copyright issues are thornier, and b) without the backing music, or at least a familiarity with the backing music, the lines set down on paper don’t generally have that internal rhythm or melody that poetry, almost by definition, must have.

This is wonderful. Thank you Someone else has already said: “how about “Sweeney Agonistes” and another has suggested Seamus Heaney. I second both of those and would add W.H. Auden, who has that pithy darkness. When will you publish? Please.

Thanks! For that Auden poem, it would be fun to draw the whole thing on one large zoom-in-able page, with the panel sequence arranged in a circular spiral as if on an Ancient Greek shield. The adaptation would begin on the outer edge, and the concluding lines would be set in the very middle.

This is such a great idea. I am looking forward to the end product. I am so glad someone decided to do this. Next project: Saki’s short stories. If you haven’t read them, I recommend starting with “Tobermory” and “The Schartz-Metterklume Method.” I thought about doing this back in the ’80s when I was working in the comic book industry but it wasn’t the right time.

Superb work . . . for all ages/education/background. One minor suggestion [since you mentioned possibly revisiting what’s you’ve produced thus far]: perhaps add one or two pedestrians to the panel, “Let us go, Through half-deserted streets”

Thanks, That’s actually a great suggestion -provided the people were very far in the distance, to emphasize the sense of loneliness. Vaguely outlined passersby can actually add to depictions of loneliness, as demonstrated by Edvard Munch’s wonderful street scenes (not to mention “The Scream”).

Yeah! Perfect!
(And I second Anonymous’ suggestion, it was the only point where I felt a disconnect between the beautiful and haunting words and the beautiful and haunting images… truly a wonderful and moving work you have co-created here! Thank you!)

This is absolutely fantastic! Prufrock is one of my favorite poems and your rendition of it is beautiful. I have created multiple cabaret performance pieces off of this poem and I love seeing how others view it. I hope you are able to finish it and I will definitely purchase the finished product!

JULIAN,what you’ve done so far is indescribably astounding!! never attempted earlier! can’t wait to see your illustrations for “I am Lazarus,come from the dead” and “a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen”!! after completing your work for this poem, why not embark on GERONTION and SWEENEY AMONG THE NIGHTINGALES?? it’ll be mind blowing! publishers galore will knock at your door. give it some thought,JULIAN. it’s well worth an attempt. best wishes,Saraswati Subbu

Beautiful drawing — I especially like the character work — great poses, expressions, gestures. etc. Looking forward to seeing the finished piece. There has to be a publisher out there smart enough to pick this up.

Thank you so much, Julian. Terrific work. Many of us here in the Philippines are also pleasured by Eliot, and most especially his Prufrock. Do finish it please. When it becomes a book, it will have a large audience here. And it will certainly set a precedent for other long poems that lend themselves to graphic stylization. Tons of sunshine vibes to you, Julian! 🙂

Hi, first congratulations for your beautiful work. I chanced upon your from a Facebook reference and what I saw is simply astounding. I have, without your permission though, shared the link with a commissioning editor at Penguin, hope that is okay with you. All the best

…. the twomen come and go talking of Michelangelo/etherized on a table/prufrock/ …these upperclass blaseness..why on earth would those women talk about Michelangelo? Please.haha do you hav a Seamus Heaney one?I haven’t looked but that would be interesting,if you can paraphrase this poet through ur comely drawings.thanks.

In this poem, written in 1915, Eliot almost single-handedly invented the modernist poetic movement.
The line in which the evening is “spread out against the sky / like a patient etherised upon a table” would have infuriated some readers back then, fascinated others, and I would argue it continues to confuse us today. After all, what does it mean? What is it selling?
Anyway, there was no such thing as “advertising copy,” really, when he wrote it so I guess it’s a kind of compliment.

This is stunning so far. I’m hardly artistic, but I’ve been memorizing Prufrock lately, so I’ve come to know the lines fairly well. And you’ve captured them truly and beautifully. I hope this will be available for purchase. I want two copies…one to frame, and one to carry around in my purse. Well done!

I adore this. Beautiful, thoughtful illustrations. It’s one of my favorite poems, and your style complements it so well that I read it with fresh eyes. I would happily give good money for a copy of the finished book (to share with my high school students) and for prints of key pages or scenes to frame. I will follow your work closely for the opportunity. 🙂

Me too me too! I’m desolate that this isn’t already done, and the holidays so close. Where’s your work ethic! (j/k). Anyway — thank you for evangelizing one of the world’s greatest poems. It reflects the birth of modern wavering, an activity very near to my heart.

As a child I heard this poem and then read it time and time again; it has stayed with me throughout my life and meant so many different things to me at different times. This is a beautifully illustrated rendering of it. Thank you for it. x

I zipped through the comments so don’t know if anyone else has mentioned this. Your work is an amazing way to introduce younger readers–teens–to a poem like Prufrock. They adore graphic novels. The poem is sufficiently accessible (which I know is a dirty word in the world of poetry). And it’s really just brilliant. Please hold out for a published book, not a chapbook. I’m a retired (New York Public Library) librarian and collection developer, so take my word for it…

Posted on fb and got resounding affirmation from the retired Head of Young Adult Services and the current Head of Collections and Circulations Operations. Have a pair of literary agents and an executive editor for a major publisher– in my building–would love to share with them and gauge their interest.

This is intensely beautiful, I’ve often wandered whether 20th century poetry can be converted into the graphic novel format? And you’ve answered my question, it IS possible to render those exquisite fragments and epiphanies of Modernism into poignant yet sublime images. I would love to see more of this!

The flow of the visualization pulled me along. I remembered learning to like poetry a long time ago when a high school English teacher taught us to read poetry as spoken, rather than stiffly dramatized (don’t know if that makes sense…). Anyway, lovely – please continue – and I believe you would have a market for this type of work in the schools

This is truly outstanding work! Consider submitting this (when finished) to Thrush Press we publish chapbooks and would love to work with you on this! Visit our website for further information. Please consider contacting us! http://www.thrushpress.com

This is truly outstanding work! Consider submitting this (when finished) to Thrush Press we publish chapbooks and would love to work with you on this! Visit our website for further information. Please consider contacting us! http://www.thrushpress.com

This is really amazing.
Your image for “the patient etherized upon a table” is so brilliant that I can’t not think of it when I read the poem again. Good work! Please finish it, I’m really looking forward to what you’d do with the last paragraph. The mermaids! 🙂

Okay, *that* was just beautiful. I didn’t think it was possible for the experience of reading The Love Song to get any better than it already was, every single time. You just managed that, for me. Please do finish the whole thing when you’re able to!

I love it! I love the fact that you made the main character look like Eliot (or be Eliot). I always see him as the main character when I read the poem. Eagerly awaiting the rest…coffee spoons, arms downed with light brown hair, mermaids… 🙂

I tried to give the fog a cat-like movement (and cat eyes), but I’m not altogether satisfied with it. The fog should be swirlier and slinkier. I might re-do that page at some point, but then, if I start going down that road, I’ll eventually want to redraw everything.

Glad to see such demand for more of this. A Modernist page I subscribe to gave a link today, and I think the work is brilliant. I have seriously pursued ink illustration before, but now I’m a grad student focusing on Joyce. This is making me want to try interpreting some poems in illustrated form. I’m also thinking of giving it as a writing assignment to students to see writing from another perspective. I echo the others, and I know you want to finish this. I hope it happens and that you take on other works as well.

What a wonderful job! This is amazing. I read Prufrock for the first time over thirty years ago, and your iterpretation is spot on. I would buy it in a heartbeat. I hope you find time and inspiration to finish.

Thanks for the idea, Kara. I’ll look into it. It’s more time that I’m missing at the moment, but then it’s really true that time is money. And maybe such a campaign would attract more attention to the piece, including that of a potential publisher.

Thank you for all these words of encouragement, which I was much in need of. I was in fact planning on starting to finish this work in earnest early in the coming year. I think I have finally figured out how to draw “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons,” which was a bit of a stumbling block. Stay tuned!